Onnidan Fan Forum

Digital hate culture now exists in a gray area between legitimacy and extremism.

There is a widespread consensus that the free speech implications of such shutdowns (of Jihadists) are dwarfed by the need to keep jihadi ideology out of the public sphere. When it comes to right-wing extremism, white supremacy, and white nationalism, however, there is no such consensus. Instead, right-wing views are defended on free speech grounds, giving extremists space to spread their ideologies. The latest example of this double standard comes from the White House, which refused on Tuesday to join an international effort to clamp down on online hate speech.

And it is not only the Trump administration; tech companies have thus far refused to treat violent white supremacist rhetoric the same way as violent jihadist rhetoric. Indeed, in a discussion on white supremacists on Twitter, a Twitter employee admitted that using the tools that Twitter deploys against the Islamic State on white supremacists would involve banning Republican politicians from the app.

With the ascendance of white identity politics in Western conservative parties and the rise of the populist radical right, right-wing extremism has been shielded from the full force of private sector and government responses to disrupt their online communications. It is not simply U.S. President Donald Trump’s dog whistles and retweets of exponents of digital hate culture such as Lauren Southern and Jayda Fransen. His administration has also reduced resources to counter right-wing extremism.